Wei Yuan believed that the purpose of learning should be "to apply what he has learned", and put forward the idea of "turning decay into magic and facilitating people", and advocated learning advanced western science and technology. And put forward the idea of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners", which opened a new trend of understanding the world and learning from the West, and was an important symbol of China's thought from tradition to modern times. Wei Yuan, like Lin Zexu, was the most insightful person who "opened his eyes to see the world" during the Opium War. He well carried out and waved Lin Zexu's understanding and learning of western thoughts and practices in Atlas of the Sea, and put forward the correct slogan of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners", thinking that "those who are good at learning from foreigners can control foreigners; People who are not good at learning from foreign countries will be controlled by foreign countries, and learning western "skills" will rise to a major event related to national security and have a great impact on society at that time. In view of the ignorance of the feudal die-hards at that time who regarded western advanced technology as "strange skills and cunning" He pointed out that "what is useful is strange skill, not cunning", which must be carefully studied and not blindly conceited. To this end, he put forward a set of specific plans, which not only included the official military industry and the improvement of military weapons and equipment, but also put forward the idea of setting up civilian industries and allowing businessmen to set up industries freely. In addition, he also proposed to "set up a translation library and look up foreign books" and "set up naval divisions in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, and those who can build western warships, fireboats, flying guns, rockets and mines are all from Hakka" to reward scientific inventions. He believes that this can "take the western skills as the skills of China", gradually change the backward face of China, and thus achieve the purpose of "controlling foreigners". He is full of national pride and confidence in the wisdom of the Chinese nation. He believes that "China's wisdom is everywhere", China "has no shortage of talents" and "no shortage of materials", and China is rich in mineral resources and has its own favorable conditions. He believes that the people of China have the ability to master the new western production technology, and can gradually achieve "no need to rely on foreign countries". He pointed out that as long as we work hard, in a few years, it will be "the people of the East China Sea and the people of the West Sea", and China will become rich and strong, overtaking the western capitalist countries.